salt in the wound
by broken halleluiah
Summary: My take on the post-Agni Ki scene. Iroh takes up painting.


**I forgot I wrote this last year after binging ATLA. Just found it on my computer this morning.**

 **Warning for brief references to suicide.**

* * *

They say you can't teach an old dragon new tricks, but that doesn't stop Iroh from taking up a new hobby late in his life. How else is he to fill his time, when so many of his former interests no longer hold any appeal for him?

The dragon hunts are no more, and he wouldn't join the hunting parties again, anyway. Too old, he would tell them. The festivals in which the dragon heads are paraded through the streets on long poles—they make him lose his appetite for the popcorn and fire flakes. And he used to instruct the children of the nobles in their firebending forms weekly, but they are masters now, fully grown and fighting on the front lines of a war that's already chewed him up and spit him out like flavorless mint leaves. He prepared them for victory, or for honor in death.

Honor. Iroh once enjoyed even the Agni Ki, had the distinction of winning several matches against very worthy opponents. He thinks now that he will happily die without ever watching another Fire Duel.

Let them say that he's gone soft. Even a dragon shed its scales in the proper season.

There is always tea. But there always is so much waiting involved in tea, in the boiling and the steeping and the cooling. So much waiting for Zuko to awaken.

So Iroh drags a blank easel into the guest room of his cottage and sits before it with a newly opened set of paints, breathing in the earthy smell. The paints were mixed from mineral deposits to create some of the most vivid hues he's ever seen, an expensive birthday gift from Lu Ten ages ago. He cannot remember which birthday, or what he was saving them for. This morning seemed as good a time as any to try his hand at painting.

In the bed beyond the easel, Zuko stirs for the first time in many hours. All through a restless night, Iroh listened as his nephew called for people who were not coming. Ozai, Azula, Mai. Ursa. Iroh's heart swells when he hears his own name, rough but clear, from the lips that have been murmuring nonsense for hours.

"Uncle Iroh?"

"Good morning, Prince Zuko."

Zuko pushes himself up on shaky arms, scanning the room with his unbandaged right eye. A pot of tea has gone cold on a bedside table littered with gauze, ointments and pastes, a bowl of cool water. "Why am I here?"

"I had the Fire Nation's best healer visit my home to see you. He enjoyed his tea far more than you did."

Zuko gingerly touches the bandage looped over the left side of his face, traces it from the bridge of his nose to his blistering ear. "Why couldn't healers come to the palace?" He frowns as he feels the crown of his head, stubbly where it has been shaved away from his burned skin.

"You were in the palace infirmary for most of yesterday, but I had you brought here. It is quieter. You can rest as my honored guest." And none of these words are untrue, though they cover the true reason under a coat of brighter color. "Is your pain bearable, Prince Zuko?"

Iroh phrases the question carefully, so that Zuko cannot deny the pain of the wound altogether. Zuko gives a narrow nod in response. Stubborn child. Iroh prays the trait will preserve him.

"The healer gave us very good news when he visited last night. Your eye is not badly damaged. You should keep your vision completely. And I am so glad." Iroh pulls his finished painting from the easel. "I painted a beautiful likeness of the cherry tree in the outer courtyard. Would you like to take a look?"

Zuko scowls at the painting. "That doesn't look like a cherry tree."

Iroh should perhaps have invested a bit of time in lessons. He has never drawn a stroke more artistic than mapping battle formations. He chuckles as he studies the paper. "I suppose the leaves are a bit long in the face. Does it look more like a weeping willow tree?"

"It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen," Zuko snaps.

Iroh shrugs. "Well, I am still glad you kept your vision. Even if you have no eye for great art."

Zuko considers that for a moment. "Father was merciful to me," he manages.

He remembers. Iroh draws a deep breath, fighting the currents of anger that threatened to pull him under, in that first hour before the sleeping draught or any of the healer's remedies took effect, when Zuko lay curled in on himself, half-conscious and hyperventilating. Laying aside his paintbrush, Iroh rolls his mind's eye back in time, trying to remember what, if anything, he understood of cruelty at thirteen. He presses his fingertips together and touches his forehead to them, measuring his words.

"Prince Zuko, your father has not been merciful."

Zuko breathes that in, and the realization settles, slow but sudden as the dawn, over his face. He is not in the comfort of his own bed. His servants do not attend to him. He is Iroh's 'honored guest.'

Iroh flips his painting over to reveal the running ink of the message that was delivered to him this morning. "The Fire Lord has given you three days to recover and prepare a crew to run an errand for him. Unfortunately, this is already the second day."

"An errand? Let me see that," Zuko demands.

"What have they taught you of the Avatar in your schooling?"

" _Give it to me!_ "

Zuko snatches the scroll and scans it once, twice, a third time. His lips move with the words, mouthing " _What?"_ to himself in complete disbelief. He shifts his gaze back to Iroh. "This is banishment. This is banishment, _isn't it?_ "

Iroh answers with a tiny movement of his head, not quite a nod. Zuko's visible eye flashes, a full prism of refracted emotions. The paper in his hands begins to smoke. The glow creeps across the scroll, shedding burning embers onto the bed.

"Not my beautiful painting!" Iroh murmurs half-heartedly, extinguishing the flecks of flame on the covers before any more of his nephew can catch fire. Zuko ignores him, reaching for his bandage again, his hand trembling with the sudden surge of pain apparent on his face. The cause is clear. His other eye is brimming with tears.

"We need to get that old bandage off." Iroh sinks onto the bed beside Zuko and cautiously begins to unwrap the bandage as his nephew's breathing accelerates dangerously. Iroh recognizes the precipice of _unbearable_ when he sees it.

"The healer wanted me to warn you about shedding tears. They will sting for quite some time and soak through your bandages. He suggested that you avoid crying while your burn heals."

It is too late for that, of course. Zuko is already bent double, weeping with heavy gasps. He hisses as the tears spill over and sear the tender skin beneath his eye. His hands close protectively over the area as he bites back a scream. Iroh wrings out a fresh cloth over the bowl on the night table.

"And I said, 'Preposterous. How do you separate healing from tears? We will simply bandage the area again, as often as we need to.'" Iroh pries Zuko's hands from the wound, sliding the cloth up to brush the tears from the swollen left eye.

To be a waterbender! To have hands that could take away pain instead of scorching the skin. It's a thought Iroh hasn't been able to banish today.

"I can do that." Zuko grabs the cloth from his uncle's hand and presses it to his cheek, his uncovered eye glaring at Iroh.

"Of course." Iroh stands and bows, and Zuko rolls away from him, his shoulders still shuddering.

Iroh walks to the window. "The healer also said to keep the window shut. But since it was a beautiful day, and I had already stopped listening to him…" He tilts his head in thought. "You can see the cherry tree from here. You know, that tree was your mother's favorite. She used to climb it sometimes and hide from her ladies-in-waiting. And when it blossoms in the spring- What a sight! I must be honest. I am a little sad that my painting is gone. It was, unfortunately, my finest work."

Zuko's hysterics have abated without warning. Only ragged breaths drift over to Iroh as he stares out into the sunshine.

"Would you prefer it if I shut the window, Prince Zuko?"

He pricks his ear for an answer.

"Prince Zuko?"

Zuko speaks to the opposite wall, a fierce, battered determination in his voice. "I'm going to kill myself."

The color drains from the landscape in front of Iroh's eyes. Brilliant green drips from the rustling leaves of the cherry tree, burning red fades from the plush curtains framing the window. Iroh swallows a flavorless mouthful of tea and sets his cup on the windowsill. He breathes the gray air, slowly, deeply.

Those were not words one wanted to hear from a welcome houseguest.

Iroh crosses the room with a heavy gait. Perching on the edge of the bed, he catches Zuko's chin, holding it so he cannot turn away. Zuko squeezes his eyes shut tight against Iroh's steady look.

"My child," Iroh murmurs. And then again, " _My child._ You are going to blister, and you are going to scar, and you are going to start again. You will have this mark forever, but it will not always cause you such pain."

Fresh tears spill over Zuko's eyelids, burning him again. He screams in utter frustration, balling the covers in his fists.

"But hear me say this. It is absolute cruelty that you cannot grieve without getting salt in your own wound."

If Iroh knows one thing, it is that he cannot allow cruelty to take anything else from him. He takes up the cloth and swabs Zuko's tears once more, gently. _To be a water bender._

"How can I start over?" Zuko asks at last, and what a miracle it is. What an earnest, miraculous question. "I have nothing."

"You will be granted your own ship. Your own crew. And as for me, I will sacrifice my promising artistic career to join that crew. We can go anywhere in the world. We can do whatever you want to do."

"We can bring back the Avatar?" Zuko's voice tilts up at the end. A question. Iroh weighs that possibility, dim and distant as it is. His heart sinks, but he keeps his face steady.

"Whatever you set your mind to."

This thought quiets Zuko, for the moment. Iroh begins to cleanse the wound as the healer as shown him. He binds it again, tying off the bandage.

"Now, let me tell you what I am going to do today. I'm going to start my painting again, because today is a perfect day for starting again. I think I will spend the whole day painting it."

"Can you do that from here?" Zuko asks wearily.

"Hmm?"

"I asked, can you paint it from here? Or are you going out?"

Iroh sits down at his easel, more pleased at the question than he wants to let on. "Oh, I can paint it well enough from here."

Zuko settles back under the covers. "You mean it will be bad no matter what."

"That is precisely what I mean."

Iroh dips his brush into a springtime green, splashes one vivid stroke across the canvas, and smiles at his work. He continues to paint as Zuko's breath evens into the gentle ebb and flow of sleep.

For a moment, peace.


End file.
